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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23987011">A Way to Drown</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allara/pseuds/Allara'>Allara</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Claude has trust issues, Complete, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, PTSD, Post-Time Skip, Verdant Wind Spoilers, aka me overthinking why Claude wears gloves after the time skip, and trauma from pre-time skip, time skip spoilers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 20:15:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>11,496</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23987011</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allara/pseuds/Allara</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>His eyes glanced through the few rogue pieces of hair hanging over his face to catch her stare. She nearly shivered from the guarded, calculating look settled in their green.<br/>She recognized that look.<br/>It was the one he regarded his enemies with as he decided whether to spare or to remove them. Ultimately, the decision was made by how valuable a chess piece they might prove to be.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>188</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic is comprised of snippets regarding Claude and Byleth as they learn to trust each other again after the time skip. And of course there's lots of angst and me making an excuse for why Claude suddenly wears gloves post-time skip</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em> Guardian Moon 1185 </em>
</p><p>    There were many things that changed in half a decade, Byleth found. </p><p>    Waking at the edge of a river with a hazy recollection of what had placed her there had been befuddling enough, but learning of her extended slumber had sparked a jarring sense of panic through her hazy mind.</p><p>    In the past weeks since her return, the monastery was no longer the bustling home for chipper students with stars in their eyes—it had fallen and crumbled beneath the storm of war mongering and instead served to be a grave for those same students. The ancient walls were scarred and scorched from the telltale signs of struggle. </p><p>    But more notably was the change of the little living, breathing things that walked the ruins as they tried to piece it back to its glory. </p><p>    They were no longer starry-eyed and grinning for what the future had planned for them; rather, there was a foggy weight that hazed their disposition and wordlessly told of the sickly whispers of the ongoing war. There was no place for cheery aspirations when death walked the halls so familiarly. </p><p>    So much had changed.</p><p>    Marianne no longer prayed for death, but now she prayed fervently that it would spare them all. </p><p>    Ignatz lost his timid stuttering to a solemn, bone-deep calm born only from the spilling of blood. </p><p>    Lysithea worked more fervently for excellence than ever against the ticking of the clock, as though its chime would announce her days were spent and she could do no more. </p><p>    Lorenz lost his intrigue for the frilly noble niceties in favor of worrying himself ill over the fate of the continent, acting as the last threadbare binding keeping his own father loyal to the Alliance. </p><p>    Leonie was no longer fighting for the favor of the late captain of the Knights of Seiros, and now fought against the alluring gleam of cheap mead from the taverns, as it seemed to stifle the sharpness—if only for a little while. </p><p>    Raphael’s appetite was ravenous as ever, but the crops yielded far less now and nothing could quite satiate the grueling ghost of blood on his hands. </p><p>    Hilda’s charm had hardened into a clipped ambition aimed to shorten the grating war, even as the threat of failure loomed over her like a suffocating shadow.</p><p>    And Claude—</p><p>    Byleth’s eyes flitted over to him now, bent over a yellowed map of Fódlan with the edge of his pen wedged between his teeth. He had grown, but the sight of such sent an unwelcome pang through her ribs. There was a distinct air of confidence that now belonged to him, but with it came a far more tempered smile and reined emotions than she recalled. Sometimes, when he summoned her to war council, she was startled to enter the room to see a collected, refined man where she had expected to see her casual, jovial student. </p><p>    He was evidently taller, older, and very much tired. </p><p>    Much had changed in five years. </p><p>    Claude removed the pen to scribble something on the map, and Byleth’s eyes followed the movement. Her eyes lingered on his gloved hands, a familiar question bubbling to the forefront of her mind. But as always, she bit it back, unwilling to push the unspoken tenseness already lingering between them</p><p>    Perhaps the most dour change was she had shattered his trust, despite his efforts to act as though nothing had transpired. But he was never one to trust so freely, she had learned early on, and whatever alliance they had built had been worn away with each year she was absent. “Asleep”, she had told him—she hadn’t known what else to call it.</p><p>    Byleth wanted to ask why he wore gloves everywhere. She had yet to see him without them on since waking from her long slumber, and it was decidedly a mystery with a sure explanation. </p><p>    <em> Why does it matter? </em></p><p>    She couldn’t recall him ever wearing them before when he was her student, save for when they traveled somewhere frigid for their monthly assignment. </p><p>    Perhaps it was nothing, she reasoned. Surely she was overthinking something so trivial as gloves. </p><p>    But if she remembered her Claude correctly, she knew he was a meticulous, deliberate man. Everything had a reason, and his mind was the checkered plane of a chess board. No detail was unnoticed or accidental. </p><p>    Some chilling instinct insisted it had something to do with how the five years had changed him—changed everyone—and she couldn’t pinpoint why. </p><p>    But she pressed her teeth tight against the question, instead nodding as he explained their plans for the upcoming battle. Even she knew she was doing an unconvincing play at being attentive to what he was saying, despite her efforts. Too much was whirling in her mind. </p><p>    His eyes glanced through the few rogue pieces of hair hanging over his face to catch her stare. She nearly shivered from the guarded, calculating look settled in their green. </p><p>    She recognized that look. </p><p>    It was the one he regarded his enemies with as he decided whether to spare or to remove them. Ultimately, the decision was made by how valuable a chess piece they might prove to be.</p><hr/><p>
  <em> Pegasus Moon 1185 </em>
</p><p>    The Valley of Torment was an incredibly fitting title. </p><p>    Byleth swept a palm over her forehead to catch the beads of sweat there, smoothing her hair into its tied pile on her head. She fought to keep her senses wired and aware as they traveled ever further into the throat of the valley, cast in a stifling glow from the lava in its pit. </p><p>    As they descended, she glanced over herself once more, wishing there was some better way to stave the heat. She had long since shucked the layers of her armor, and was left in a thin cotton shirt tucked into her trousers. She let her palm splay on her thigh, wiping away the sweat pooling on her hand. Her horse was faring poorly, as its coat glistened from the heat and heavy huffs of air rushed from its nostrils.</p><p>    Clenching her jaw in impatience, she checked over the rest of the convoy. Their eyes were all downcast and weary, pink-faced and looking sun-sick. </p><p>    Valley of Torment indeed.</p><p>    Claude was uncharacteristically silent as his wyvern hung lazily overhead to provide some semblance of shade to the leading group, and Byleth couldn’t gauge his expression from her point on the ground. He had quite the resistance to warm temperatures, but surely even he was melting between the beating sun and the churning earth. </p><p>    She felt distinctly as though they had descended into the bowels of hell by the time they reached the valley’s floor.</p><p>    And with that notion in mind, she almost wasn’t surprised when the first stirs of enemy troops arrived on the ridge. </p><hr/><p>    “<em> Claude! </em>”</p><p>    She arced her sword to cut down the soldier before her, gripping it with two hands in an attempt to keep the hilt from sliding out of her slicked palms. A poisonous dread pooled in her stomach as she watched him fumble with his axe in a panic, patting away the flames licking at his sleeves. The mage who cast the spell stalked toward him, arms raised and framed by familiar runes of dark magic. </p><p>    Byleth abandoned her formation, leaping across the craggy rocks toward Claude as he struggled to put the flames out. Motion caught her attention to the left, and she had hardly opened her mouth to shout a warning when an arrow split through the burning air and found a home lodged in Claude’s ribs with a sickening thud. </p><p>    Without thinking a second longer, she reached for that ethereal power sleeping within her. </p><p>    But all that answered her was a tinge that reminded her too much of the way her throat had ached after she had shouted and cried over her father’s death. Her body was shouting in protest, and her powers had been exhausted. She thought she could feel a protesting trickle of blood tumbling down her chin, but it was almost impossible to tell apart from the sweat. She had lost track of how many times she had turned back time, as this battle had proved to be far more fatal than any of them had anticipated. </p><p>    And now she had reached the edges of her limits as Claude collapsed onto the red earth beneath him. </p><p>    Blinded with a startling sense of battle-born fury, she dropped her steel sword to unsheathe the Sword of the Creator from her hip and heaved it at the mage as he moved to cast a finishing spell. The vertebrae-like pieces of the sword separated, slicing through the air and piercing the cloaked mage’s chest like a speared carp. She wrenched the sword free, watching numbly as he toppled forward from the force of the retracting blade. His blood joined Claude’s in a simmering pool on the burning earth. </p><p>    Arriving at Claude’s side, she flung a sloppy nosferatu spell in the direction of the archer, listening long enough to hear his gasped surprise as the magic stole his life and siphoned it into her own limbs. The dizziness born of overexerting her powers was lifted—if only slightly.</p><p>    But she paid it little mind, falling to kneel before Claude and to coax his head into her lap as she frantically assessed his wounds. He feverishly protested against her, attempting to fight his way from her touch. But she held fast, ignoring his nonsensical words as they faded into baited breath as he clenched his teeth. The scene reminded her far too much of cradling her dying father in her arms, and she forcefully forbade the memory to grip her mind.</p><p>    She wouldn’t let Claude die. </p><p>    The arrow was too deeply lodged in his flesh. Removing it would only worsen his bleeding, so she simply snapped the shaft to leave the arrowhead in place. The fire that had caught his gloves and sleeves had died out, leaving the leather and fabric tattered and brittle. The skin beneath was equally as charred, seeping with sluggish blood. </p><p>    Silently, she cursed her limited knowledge of healing magic even as she cast a quick spell over his hands, figuring she could at least stop the bleeding there. </p><p>    Her eyes lifted to frantically gauge the battlefield, taking in the thinned numbers of the enemy with a vague relief that they were somehow winning. </p><p>    It had taken a heavy toll on their own troops, but they were winning. </p><p>    Ignatz was perched on a rock far north, sending arrows into the fray to cover Marianne as she was tending to some wounded soldiers farther away. She had long since abandoned her mount, leaving it at the crest of the canyon as she had worried the heat would harm her horse. But now Byleth was silently cursing her empathy, knowing that having a mount would save them precious moments. Even Claude’s own wyvern was nowhere to be seen since he dismounted at some point in the battle to aid the struggling front lines. </p><p>    <em> Stupid </em>, she silently cursed him. Had he remained on his wyvern, he would have been far safer and removed from the burning ground. But of course he was quick to throw himself into danger if it meant saving others. </p><p>    “Ignatz!” Byleth shouted, willing her voice to carry over the clanging of steel on steel. After calling his name twice, he finally whirled from his perch to seek her out, gaze catching hers. His eyes widened as they flitted over Claude’s now unconscious body steeped in his own blood. </p><p>    She didn’t have to say a word more as he nodded in understanding, leaping from his place to grab Marianne once she finished healing a soldier. Together they fought their way to where Byleth was kneeling, Marianne’s face paling as much as it could beneath the flush from the heat. </p><p>    “Oh, Claude,” Ignatz managed as they arrived, eyebrows twisted in worry at the sight of their leader. He quickly tore himself from his stunned reverie, turning to give them cover as Marianne fell silently to her knees at Claude’s other side. She muttered something akin to a prayer, but none of the words registered in Byleth’s pounding head.</p><p>    Byleth numbly watched her weave runes of white magic into the air, the hum of power doing little to sooth her frayed nerves. She clung to the numbness, knowing full well that panic lurked somewhere beneath it. </p><p>    Unsure what to do with herself and unable to find the strength to leave his side, Byleth sopped the sweat from Claude's forehead with her dirtied sleeve. Even while unconscious, a slight crease of discomfort clung at his brow, and his breaths were shallow between his lips. Already he looked far too pale. Byleth let her hand rest warmly on his chest, fingers seeking out the faint thrum of his heart beneath his shirt as she chanted a desperate mantra in her mind. </p><p>    <em> Stay </em></p><p> <em> Stay </em></p><p> <em> Stay. </em> </p><hr/><p>    The claws of sleep were tugging at her eyes. But she stubbornly blinked away the stinging tiredness, attention lingering on Claude’s unconscious form on the infirmary bed. He was soaked in a sheen of sweat, as though they were still lying in the bowels of Ailell’s scorched valley. His hands were splayed on their backs, palms upward and bundled in a mess of bandages. </p><p>    Marianne’s white magic had taken care of the worst of the burns, and she announced there wouldn’t even be scarring once his body healed the rest. But Byleth hadn’t missed the unsettled weight in her eyes as she had glanced back into the infirmary room. There was evidently something <em> more </em>, and Byleth wanted to ask what. But on top of the concern in Marianne’s eyes was the battle-weary look that they were all shouldering, so instead Byleth encouraged her to get some food and rest. </p><p>    So now here she sat at his side, ignoring the itch of curiosity to thumb those bandages aside to see what had unsettled Marianne so. Byleth feared there was damage done to his hands to the point he could no longer wield his weapon—but surely Marianne would have informed her if it was so severe? Her phrasing had implied all the burn wounds were well taken care of and would cause no more issues. Even the arrow wound in his side had healed enough to no longer need any bandaging, leaving only the slightest wink of irritated skin where the arrowhead had been lodged. </p><p>    Byleth let out a weary sigh that filled the still room. She was fretting. </p><p>    Quietly, she sat at the edge of Claude’s bed, movements small and measured. Soon his fever would break, and he would wake soon after. Then all would be well once more, and they could plan the army’s next course of action. </p><p>    Byleth was reluctant to admit she was feeling a little aimless without his presence, and the thought sent her stomach sinking. </p><p>    Hesitantly, she reached to brush his hair from his face almost instinctively, but she halted her hand midair. She was startled to find a low, icy guilt biting at her lungs, the memory of him flinching and fighting from her touch in Ailell surfacing to the forefront of her mind. </p><p>    He still didn’t trust her.</p><p>    What would he do if he saw her now, seated at his bedside and reaching to touch him with such familiarity? Perhaps five years ago he would have teased her, vowing to use this as unshakable evidence that he <em> was </em>her favorite student—like he so often insisted he was. </p><p>    But now, in the midst of war, this Claude wasn’t quite the easy-going, troublemaking kid that he once was. </p><p>    He likely would flinch at her touch, then try to brush off the instinct with a practiced smile. Or perhaps he would swat her hand away—though Byleth reasoned he would never be so outwardly irritated at anything. </p><p>    She dropped her hand back in her lap and her gaze fell with it, feeling oddly defeated. The ropes of an aimless, helpless feeling were snaking their way around her lungs, and she felt as though she was struggling to breathe against them.</p><p>    Byleth’s eyes flicked toward his hand nearest to her in passing, but her gaze stalled. </p><p>    There, curling just beneath the edges of the bandages, was the barest hint of a scar before it disappeared under the cover of the fabric. Byleth blinked, recognizing at once that it was an old scar long since healed—and certainly not from fire. </p><p>    Resisting the urge to chew the inside of her lip, she took one more glance at his restful face before shoving the bite of guilt aside and indulging in her curiosity just this once. </p><p>    She tucked her finger gently underneath the first passing of bandages, tugging carefully away at the fabric. Her eyes followed the scar as she revealed it, the pale, puckered skin starting just below the first knuckle of his first finger. It traveled down at a curve, disappearing into his palm. Careful, as though handling fragile glass, she turned his hand in her own to chase the scar. </p><p>    Her lungs seemed to freeze as she stared at the spangled network of raised skin across his palm. They were deep and gnarled, almost resembling the wound born of claws or some beast. But the tendrils were too irregularly spaced to belong to a creature—yet she couldn’t say she had ever seen wounds or scars that resembled his. </p><p>    Almost against her will, her thumb brushed over the uneven surface of his palm. How had he managed to continue archery with such severe injury to his hand? Or even wield his ax? Her eyes flitted to his other hand, chest wrenching at the possibility that the scars were mirrored on the other, too.</p><p>    For a moment she considered the slashed scar across her own chest, splayed like a crude line of stitch-work over where her heart should have been. The men in her father’s mercenary company always brandished and bragged their scars like war medals, yet she had always felt the distinct sense they were only the mark of something stolen. The mark over her heart; the marks across the calluses of his palm—both always meticulously hidden from sight: for her, merely because she didn’t like the reminder of her absent heartbeat. She wondered what these marks on his hand had robbed him of, and wagered he covered them with gloves for much of the same reason as she wore high-cut collars.</p><p>    Her thoughts were abruptly halted as his fingers twitched in her hands, and her eyes snapped to his face as he grimaced his way into the wakeful world.</p><p>    Before she could even think to set his hand down, his eyes startled open and he wrenched his hand away as though he had been burned again.</p><p>    For a moment, the room was insufferably silent as Claude found her eyes, his hand at his chest as though to nurse it, and Byleth could only stare as words failed her. She felt a disparaging sense of shame, as though she had been caught doing something that might earn her a scolding. </p><p>    “You’re awake,” she eventually managed, the words feeling tangled on her tongue. Claude blinked the last of his sleep away, glancing almost imperceptibly at her hand before finally grasping his calm mask he always donned. He smoothly removed his hand from his chest to prod at the faint hint of a wound where the arrow had landed, observing it critically. </p><p>    “Marianne did good work,” he noted, his sleep-heavy voice deceptively light even as he grimaced. </p><p>    Byleth only managed a hum of vague agreement. </p><p>    “How do you feel?”</p><p>    “A bit like I’ve been chewed up and spit back out by a demonic beast, but otherwise all right.”</p><p>    “Do you want me to get Marianne?”</p><p>    “No,” he said hurriedly, a forced grin lingering on his lips that did little to mask the lingering tiredness in his eyes. “It’s embarrassing enough to have been shot down in front of the entire army. I won’t dare complain about a little bruise. My reputation is at stake.”</p><p>    Byleth ignored his forced attempt to lighten the air. “You lost a lot of blood.”</p><p>    “Ah,” he acknowledged, trying to discreetly tuck his hands beneath the covers of the sheets as he fought to push himself upright, as though to hide them from sight. “Well, that would certainly explain why I was knocked out.”</p><p>    Byleth stood and reached to help him struggle upright, but he flinched away—whether involuntarily or not, she couldn’t tell. She paused for a second time, hands hovering in the air as she fought with the sense that she was very much intruding and overstepping <em> something </em>. </p><p>    She wanted to ask why. Why his hand was so mangled, why her so much as touching him made him recoil. </p><p>    But she clamped down on the questions, turning instead to fetch some water for him to drink if only to busy herself. A sudden memory bubbled from her hazy recollection of her childhood: when she had nearly drowned in a lake and inhaled a lungful of water. She was reminded now of the strangled sense of suffocating as she begged the universe for air. </p><p>    “Teach,” he started as she set the glass on the small table at his bedside, “Do you happen to know where my gloves ended up?”</p><p>    She glanced at him, searching over his features as she tried to read the light lilt of his voice. He was still fighting to maintain an air of indifference and lightheartedness—or at least she figured he was. </p><p>    So, she played her hand at dancing around the strained tension between them with banter of her own. If only to coax answers from him. </p><p>    “I never thought you to be too sentimental.”</p><p>    “Sentimental?” He chuckled, airy and oddly cold.</p><p>    “Those gloves meant that much to you?”</p><p>    He shrugged, eyes meandering the space of the room. “Perhaps they were a gift from someone dear.”</p><p>    Lie. </p><p>    “Then I have terrible news.”</p><p>    “Pray tell,” he feigned a conspiratorial gasp, eyes finishing their wander of the space around them to pin her beneath their stare once more. </p><p>    “They were a burned, ruined mess after Ailell,” she told him in a flat tone. “We had to retire them. They’ve probably been long thrown away by now.”</p><p>    “A shame,” he heaved a sigh, “I suppose I’ll have to send the sad news back to that dear someone who gifted them to me.”</p><p>    “They were really so important,” Byleth noted, allowing a hint of irritation in her tone. They were both well aware of the twisting dance they were performing around one another: Byleth prodding for answers while Claude ducked from her. She figured he knew of the unspoken questions Byleth was trying to inject into their lifeless banter, and she knew he was toying with her patience for the sake of his own secrecy. </p><p>    <em> Why won’t you just tell me what those scars are from? </em> She practically wanted to shout. But then she was struck with the ridiculousness of how much she cared to know—before being sobered with the realization that it didn’t matter. Not really: it had nothing to do with what those scars were from, or why he wore gloves like they were his own skin. Rather, it was her own little test to see that he truly lost all trust in her. That he wouldn’t even confide in her with something so glaring.</p><p>    “Perhaps you should give them some words of memorial. Let them know how truly reliable and important they were to you.”</p><p>    Something in his eyes flashed, too quick for her to capture. She could practically taste the sudden charge in the air, and she knew their terse teasing had ended. </p><p>    “Perhaps,” he relented, voice no longer lilting with its usual joviality, forced or otherwise.  He yawned, and she silently noted that he had yet to touch the glass of water she had poured for him. His hands were still deliberately tucked beneath the cover of his sheets at his side, as though anchoring him. Byleth imagined the tendons of his hands sharp as they gripped the sheets, just as his jaw was wrenched too tightly now. “But for now I think I could use more sleep. Who knew surviving a near-death experience required so much sleeping to survive?”</p><p>    Somehow she figured he probably did already know that fact very well firsthand, but she opted to say nothing of it. She allowed silence to hang between them as they held each other’s stare, daring him to speak the truth. </p><p>    He offered her a plastered attempt of a smile. So she stepped away from his bedside, heeded the thinly disguised dismissal, and headed towards the door.    </p><p>    Something in her chest ached as she stepped to reach for the handle, and she felt the sudden frustrating urge to weep. She bit back the flare of confusion at her emotions that she still hardly knew how to gauge, letting her hand pause on the knob. Something was begging to be said, but she couldn’t quite sort it into coherent words. She could feel Claude’s stare burning into her back, but strangely felt only prickles of cold through her limbs. </p><p>    She felt terribly alone. </p><p>    And perhaps that feeling was unfair—selfish even, considering how she very nearly had lost him that day in the Valley where it seemed as though they were in the grips of hell. If that arrow had been even a breath higher, it would have killed him within a second, and that would have been it. </p><p>    The thought of how near he had stumbled towards death coupled with the memory of his blood sizzling on the scorching earth beneath him had kept her awake these past few nights. She couldn’t even stomach the thought of him dying. </p><p>    Yet, as she lingered there at the door with tears stinging in her eyes, she felt faintly as though she was still mourning the loss of something dear. </p><p>    The handle was cutting into her palm. </p><p>    “Rest well,” she choked, despising the way her voice sounded so beaten and hallowed under the weight in her chest. </p><p>    She didn’t wait for his response as she threw the door open, nor did she pause when he heard her name on his breath as she shut the door behind her. </p><hr/><p>
  <em> Lone Moon 1185 </em>
</p><p>    In many ways, the monastery always felt like coming home. </p><p>    When she had first woken from her five-year slumber, her sluggish body had practically dragged her there like an automaton. Logically, it was because she needed to know what had become of it and her students, but sentimentally she knew it was because there was nowhere else for her to go. The monastery was the only home she had truly learned to call hers. </p><p>    Yet there were still times when Byleth wanted to be anywhere <em> but </em>the monastery. </p><p>    Where the familiar walls offered solace and a homey comfort, they also often suffocated her. It seemed as though she had worn a rutted path in the stones between her quarters and the war council room, branching away only to stop by the dining hall or to check on her Deer. No matter where she walked was the choking sense of responsibility and the promise of battle on the horizon, even as she was drowning in piles of maps and paperwork. </p><p>    So, on the rare occasion that she was gifted the reprieve of free time, she found herself wandering from the towering walls and into town. She waved briefly at the gatekeeper on her way by, passing through the small marketplace before emerging onto the stony ridge that overlooked the mountainside. The sun was dipping low in the sky, casting a honeyed glow over the tiered town below her. Her gaze lifted beyond the tiled rooftops into the valley beyond, wondering distantly what laid there. How were the tenants and farmers faring in the brunt of this long war? </p><p>    A minuscule twinge in her missed the simplicity of being a mercenary, sticking to the roads and wandering wherever work would lead. </p><p>    But that was an entirely different life. As things stood now, she realized she could never quite lead a satisfying life as a mercenary. There was too much to be done; too much to change for the better. She would be restless. </p><p>    With a heavy sigh, she shook herself from her thoughts to follow down the winding cobbled road that snaked into town. The shops and houses here had suffered the brutality of the attack five years prior, but even now renovation efforts were well under way. It sobered her, seeing how resilient and quick to rebuild the townspeople were when the threat of another battle could descend upon them any day. Would they be so quick to heal after a second time?</p><p>    The passersby paid her little attention as she wandered among them on the outskirts of the road, all busy to clean up the last of their wares before the daylight left them. She considered buying something to eat, but decided against it lest she call attention to herself. Besides, funds were meager at best and she wasn’t in the mood to haggle a shop owner to lower their unreasonable prices. </p><p>    So she merely wandered, willing the pinched tenseness in her shoulders to ease as she put distance between herself and the monastery at her back. Perhaps it was a little irresponsible to remove herself from her work like this. But time to herself was far too rare, and she was beginning to feel as though she couldn’t breathe in the shadow of the monastery. Everyone needs a chance to stretch their legs, she reasoned. </p><p>    She had barely passed an abandoned glasswork shop when she shivered, hair on her neck rising. Her hand automatically itched to reach for the dagger at her waist as her eyes scoured the buildings around her.</p><p>    <em> There </em>.</p><p>    It was almost imperceptible: the tousle of fabric reflected in the latticed window in her periphery. Whoever was following her was keeping to the shadows cast by the low sun, several paces behind her. </p><p>    Allowing her posture to relax to feign cluelessness, she allowed her feet to carry her past two more shops before turning into a ruined part of town that had yet to receive the same rebuilding as the main street. There wasn’t another soul on the narrow walkway as she passed through, save for the quiet shadow clinging to her movements from a distance. </p><p>    Two more quick turns, and she found herself in a narrow alleyway. Here, she kicked her feet into motion and climbed swiftly up the uneven stonework at her right. She hefted herself onto an open wound in the building’s side where she perched on the rotting floor two stories up, concealed in the charred ceiling’s shadow. She kept her breaths slow and measured, silent as she waited for the figure to follow into the alley. </p><p>    She counted fifteen seconds before they arrived, cloaked and slinking cautiously to peek around the corner to gauge where she had gone. Upon scanning the alleyway and finding it apparently empty, they slipped between the buildings to trace her steps. </p><p>    An unwelcome pang pierced her chest. She could recognize that gait from a mile away—she had spotted it many times in his academy days when he was sneaking from prohibited parts of the monastery knowing full well he was not allowed there.</p><p>    Byleth counted again until he was just past her perch before lowering herself back into the alleyway, silent as a wraith. He had just barely registered the slight sigh of boots against uneven stone when Byleth threw her full weight into him, pinning him to the far wall. </p><p>    He released a stifled sound of surprise—doubled when he felt the press of her dagger to his bare neck after she tore his hood from his head.</p><p>    Distantly, she wondered what the sentence would be to holding a knife to the Duke of the Alliance. Death, likely—but all she could see at the moment was fiery red and felt the taste of blood as she clenched her jaw. </p><p>    “I guess I should know better than to sneak up on you,” Claude managed, his voice strangled with his face pressed into the stone wall. The teasing tone in his voice nearly sent her stumbling over the last of her patience, and it took all of her will not to give him a lovely bruise on the back of his head with the butt of her dagger. </p><p>    Neither of them made to move, nor did Byleth offer any response. Her fingers were beginning to numb from gripping her blade so tightly, and her teeth felt as though they might shatter from biting the inside of her cheek so hard. </p><p>    “Are you going to let me go, Teach?”</p><p>    He managed a shallow sigh when she didn’t move. </p><p>    “How do I know you’re not going to try to kill me the second I let you go?”</p><p>    “Kill you—?” There was genuine surprise in his voice that melted into a startled sort of laughter. She pressed her forearm tighter against his back, forcing the laughter into an airless wheeze. </p><p>    “Though I suppose I’m still too valuable to kill yet. Not when you can still use my power, right?”</p><p>    “Teach…”</p><p>    His tone was gentle, and she finally released him as though he burned her. She stepped away until her back bumped into the opposite wall of the alley, and she watched as he stumbled from his spot and rubbed his scuffed chin with his back still to her. </p><p>    “Why were you following me?” She demanded, voice clipped and dangerous. </p><p>    He released another sigh before tilting his head just enough to watch her from the corner of his eye. This was the first time she had even seen him today; he had spent the large part of the day locked up in the library doing goddess-knows-what. Pouring over some banned book he dug up that might help their war efforts, likely. His hair was tousled out of its usual well-kept style, and even in the dying light she could see the faint scruff growing across the bottom of his face. He looked as tired and overworked as she felt. Something about the sight sent an unfamiliar pang through her chest.</p><p>    “You should be flattered, really,” he insisted. “I was making sure you were safe. These aren’t particularly peaceful times, and your head would make for a pretty trophy for Imperial spies.”</p><p>    His voice was too light, too casual.</p><p>    “You’re lying.”</p><p>    “Oh? You don’t think you’d be of value to the Empire?”</p><p>    “You know that’s not what I meant,” she snapped, not bothering to hide the impatience lacing her tone. </p><p>    “You don’t think I worry about you? That I want you safe?”</p><p>    “I think you’d jump at the chance to make a martyr of me. But you would prefer I live at least as long as the war continues.”</p><p>    “Teach—“</p><p>    “I don’t want to hear it, Claude.”</p><p>    “You’re not going to even give me the chance to explain myself?”</p><p>    “Not when every word out of your mouth is some silver-tongued lie.”</p><p>    He turned to her fully now, and she would have shivered from the unmasked darkness in his eyes if it weren’t for her own boiling blood.</p><p>    “So that’s it then?” He asked, voice flat. “We can’t even keep our own team unified—how, then, are we supposed to win this war when we’re at each other’s throats?”</p><p>    She startled herself with an outburst of bitter, icy laughter. “You tell me, Mr. Epitome of Distrust.”</p><p>    He let a sharp breath out of his nose before glancing quickly over her, evidently trying to maintain whatever nonchalant and casual demeanor he always wore.</p><p>    “I think,” she began, stepping away from the wall to face him closer, staring up at him, “I think you were following me because you were suspicious. What could I possibly be doing outside of the monastery, right? Perhaps I have some meeting with ‘Imperial spies’?”</p><p>    She despised how small she felt from this close. He seemed to tower over her, and she stood in his shadow. Her father, Rhea, Claude—she was always living in the suffocating shadow of someone else in charge, someone else playing the strings and telling her what her place was in their plan. </p><p>    “You don’t trust me.”   </p><p>    It was strange: she had thought that phrase a thousand times since finding him in the Goddess Tower. Each time he so much as glanced at her, his gaze was always laced with it—distrust. Suspicion. But now, when she finally voiced it and tossed the phrase into the air between them, it seemed like a death sentence. She felt it like a blade in between her ribs, acute and demanding her attention. The sudden desire to flee and nurse her wounds was almost crippling, but she stubbornly stood her ground as she stared up at his well-masked facade.</p><p>    “What reason do I have to trust you?” he asked finally, voice low. </p><p>    She suddenly wished she had never left the monastery, never left the lull of that river that delivered her from slumber, never left that inn when three bright eyed students were in need of help. And then:</p><p>    “Why would I make that mistake again?”</p><p>    <em> I see.  </em></p><p>I see.</p><p>    When she breathed next, she was the Ashen Demon. She forced that whirlwind in her chest into silence, smoothed her face into marble. Unfeeling, unthinking. The girl with the blank stare. </p><p>    She reached out and gripped his gloved hand, ignoring the way he startled and flinched from her touch, yanking it forward against his attempts to fight away. His face contorted into something akin to panic, unfamiliar on his usually calm features. But she paid it no mind. She was ashen. </p><p>    She forced the handle of her dagger into his palm, closed his fingers around it with her other hand, and shoved his hand away from her with the same motion she used to flick blood off her sword in the midst of battle. </p><p>    “When you decide the time is right,” she told him, tone lifeless even as she gestured with her head at her dagger now in his hand, “at least make it personal.”</p><p>    She didn’t wait for his response. She didn’t want to hear it. </p><p>    Instead, she turned on heel and fled that abandoned alleyway, movements far too unhinged and startled. It was a miracle she didn’t collapse into a heap out of the sudden exhaustion clinging to her bones. Irrationally, she wondered if that whirlwind in her chest had sought an escape and was now bleeding through that old slashed scar across her chest, seeping through the layers of her clothing. </p><p>    But when she glanced down, there was nothing. Always nothing.</p><p>    “Byleth!”</p><p>    She turned the corner, deaf to him. </p><p>    He was running after her, his strides quickly eating the distance between. </p><p>    “Byleth, you’re being ridiculous—“</p><p>    “Shut <em> up </em> for once, will you?” She snapped, stopping to face him as abruptly as she had fled. He halted as well, breath hitching at the sight of her as though seeing her for the first time. </p><p>    “From here on out, we’re commander and tactician. All right? Nothing more.” She gestured between them. “Then the second the war is over, you’re done with me.”</p><p>    He released some sound between a scoff and a lifeless chuckle. “That’s all you have left for me then, my friend?”</p><p>    “Don’t you dare,” she warned. </p><p>    “Fine,” he snapped, and this time she did shiver from the alien tone of ice frosting his voice. “You want trust?”</p><p>    Claude dropped her dagger to the cobblestones to free his hands in a noisy clatter. He tugged the fingers of his left glove, pulling the leather away and tossing the glove to the ground beside the blade. </p><p>    “You wanted to know what these were from, right?” He thrusted his palm before her, close enough for her to see yet too far for her to touch him again. “Why I wear gloves?”</p><p>    She swallowed, blinking at the rough surface of his hand, carved with ridges of old scars. When she said nothing, he barreled onward, the dam of whatever resolve he built to keep his secrets from her apparently toppled.</p><p>    “The day the monastery was attacked,” he began, voice clipped with dry anger, “I saw you. I saw you run after Rhea—I lost track long enough to lose you, but I still heard you. The wall gave way, and I heard you scream from across the field. So I ran like I was possessed, even though there were demonic beasts and soldiers and a thousand things that wanted to kill me—I ran to you. But there was just rubble. Before I could even think to search elsewhere, the rest of the wall gave way. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I was trapped beneath the rubble with two others—two boys, one a first year and the other had graduated just the year prior. </p><p>    “One of the stones broke my hand when the wall fell—yet I was the lucky one. The older boy died shortly after the wall fell. His chest was crushed from a piece of stone—he suffocated to death. The younger one had an arrow wound in his stomach and slowly bled out while the three of us were trapped under the rubble. He died an hour after the other boy. I was left there overnight, pinned between two corpses and trapped by stone. I don’t suppose you know what it’s like, being pressed against cold, lifeless skin like that—“</p><p>    He lost his grip on his words, pausing to take a calming breath. </p><p>    “Claude—“</p><p>    “I thought about sawing my hand off with the arrowhead from the boy’s corpse to free myself. I almost did—It was nothing short of a miracle that Catherine found me before I could, you see? It was because she saw my ridiculous yellow sash from between the stones. And even when she and the other knights managed to lift the stones enough for me to get my hand free and climb out, I was still possessed. I think she was trying to talk to me, but I ignored her. I began digging through the rubble, convinced you were somewhere under there too. My hand was ruined and hardly even looked like a hand—and I kept digging and digging and digging—“</p><p>    “Claude—“</p><p>    “Catherine had to practically carry me back to the camp outside of town. My hands were so bloodied and torn from digging through the rubble that Shamir was convinced I’d never draw a bow ever again—especially with a broken hand.</p><p>    “And you know what’s odd?” He laughed, and Byleth wanted to look anywhere but the faint glisten in his eyes, but she was sickly transfixed. “I didn’t care. I didn’t care. I didn’t care that I’d never use a bow again or any weapon for that matter. I was going to find you, and it’d all be okay. Catherine threatened to tie me to the saddle of a horse to keep me from running back to the monastery and I was too tired and numb to fight her. But I kept looking for you across the Alliance. There were no sightings of you near the monastery so maybe—maybe you had escaped elsewhere. But I was going to find you.</p><p>    “I searched for the better part of three years, Byleth.”</p><p>    “Claude,” she managed again, voice sounding distant to her ears.</p><p>    “But you were gone, and I finally grew up and realized I was wasting my time.”</p><p>    She was shaking her head—she vaguely realized that at some point he had removed his other glove as well. He let his bare hands fall to his sides, gaze lifted to the empty sky above them. </p><p>    “So no,” he whispered. “I don’t trust ghosts.”</p><p>    She wrenched her eyes shut, his voice shattering what was left of her composure. She hugged her arms to herself, wishing that starless, twilit sky would engulf her whole. </p><p>    “I’m sorry, Claude,” she said. She wasn’t entirely sure if he could even hear her quiet voice—wasn’t sure if there was another soul in the world around her. She was a lone star in the peerless expanse of a violet sky, burning out to fade to nothing. </p><p>    There were a thousand things begging to be said, and she could grasp none of them with her lungs.</p><p>    “Me too,” he said simply.</p><p>    She opened her eyes long enough to watch his retreating form, the soft footfalls of his boots seemingly loud in her ringing ears. He disappeared around a far corner, and she shivered.</p><p>    When she returned to her quarters that evening, she blinked at the sight of her dagger placed neatly on her desk, and felt ill at the reflection in its polished blade. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I was originally thinking of posting this all into one chapter, but looking at the word count decided that would be WAY too much for a oneshot. So this smaller chapter is the conclusion of this little short story. Thank you to everyone who has left kind comments and kudos! I'm still working on my writing style but I'm thankful to those of you who have taken the time to read this :')</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>Lone Moon 1185</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Byleth had a faint recollection of the first time she had heard an explosive. Despite being far from the heart of it, she could recall the way her ears rang afterwards, like hornets were trapped to her eardrums. If her faulty memory was correct, she assumed she must have been sixteen. She could still feel the ghost of blood trickling from her ear—the one that was closest to the blast. In the moment, she had irrationally wondered if she’d be deaf. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>The same thought surfaced now, as her palms found purchase on the weathered stone beneath her. She gasped a painful breath of air into her lungs as she hefted herself up from the ground, shaking on her hands and knees as her ears were flooded with the sound of bells. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She coughed, and watched the vibrant spray of blood that spattered the pale stone beneath her. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Odd</span>
  </em>
  <span>, was all her brain managed to supply. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Something like this had only happened twice before that she could recall; the first when she fused with Sothis and her body had threatened to wither from the unearthly power. She had collapsed shortly after avenging her father and murdering Tomas—Solon? Solon. The second was that burning day in the Valley of Torment.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She had pushed herself too far again now, just like she had done at Ailell. Strange that she seemed to be gripping the frayed edges of her powers so often now when she had hardly used them five years prior. War was far more brutal than the calmer academy days where the worst they handled were bandits and skirmishes. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Why had she turned back time? Right. Ferdinand had lost his composure, riding headfirst into the swarm of militia surrounding Ladislava, all to achieve some vengeful glory for the wrongs of the Empire. The boorish act had resulted in him showered in an onslaught of miasma until his body was indistinguishable from the corpses of his battalion. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>There was a warped, muffled sound that pierced the ringing in her ears, and her hand groped the stone until it found her sword. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Professor!”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Grasping what little energy she had left, she pushed herself clumsily onto her feet, stumbling until Lysithea arrived at her side to attempt to steady her. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Ferdinand,” Byleth said hoarsely, and Lysithea paused long enough to follow Byleth’s gaze until it landed on the named man farther north. Already, he was shoving his horse past the soldiers of his battalion, ignoring Dorothea’s frantic protests with a resolute set to his features. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Stop him.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Lysithea glanced back once, eyes wide with understanding before giving a curt nod. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>The slight girl searched around them before looking up to spot Hilda’s wyvern diving overhead. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She shouted the other woman’s name before throwing a ball of fire in Ferdinand’s direction, impeccable aim landing just paces before his feet and startling his horse into rearing him off its saddle. Meanwhile, Hilda caught sight and swooped down, catching Lysithea’s outreached hand and hefting her onto her wyvern’s back with her. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Byleth leaned heavily against her sword in Lysithea’s absence, and the girls threw her mutual looks of concern before Byleth waved them away and pointed to Ferdinand once more. Taking the command, Hilda urged her wyvern onward and flew after him before he could remount and fight his way around the flames of Lysithea’s spell.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Trusting they could restrain Ferdinand from marching to his death a second time, Byleth allowed her sluggish gaze to search the scene around her. Their ambush on the bridge had so far been a success, but they were still taking a heavy toll on their numbers. She had long since lost track of how many times she had to halt the flow of time, wrenching at the fabric of reality to set it back with the burning image of one of her companions stained in their own blood in her memory. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Jeralt had once told her to make friends, but never family. Not if you were to ride into battle with them—the sentimentality of growing too close with one’s fellow soldiers was like placing a sharp blade to one’s throat and praying it wouldn’t break skin. People who cared too much did irrational things and sacrificed too much, Jeralt had claimed. A recipe for disaster in the art of warfare. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>As she watched Hilda sweep her wyvern down before Ferdinand to allow Lysithea off to reason with him, Byleth’s fuzzy mind was filled with her father’s stern wisdom. She knew he said it from a wounded place in his heart, but he had never said from where, and she had never asked. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Dorothea had caught up to Ferdinand, gesturing furiously at him while Hilda urged her wyvern to blockade him from shoving past. Ferdinand blinked between Dorothea and Lysithea as though waking from a hazed dream, grip loose on his lance as the former shouted and the latter scolded while keeping watch on their surroundings. Dorothea finally ran out of words to say before yanking him into a furious embrace, his eyes startled wide. After a few beats, Byleth could see the faint movement of his free hand moving to comfort her. Hilda and Lysithea exchanged a knowing look before Hilda’s shoulders began to shake with what Byleth presumed to be a snicker. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Byleth’s gaze wandered, head light like she had lost too much blood.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>To the east, Raphael was barreling his way through the wall of enemies that had surrounded him, Ignatz at his heels providing cover. We swept a gauntleted fist at a soldier, leaving his defenses momentarily open, but Ignatz read his movements well and fired an arrow at the swordsman who made the mistake of acting on Raphael’s fumble. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>To the south, Marianne was blazing through the enemy’s formation with the glow of white magic, all while Lorenz struggled to juggle gaping at the sudden realization of her graceful confidence and keeping himself alive with his own dark magic. They weaved around each other with expert horsemanship, the sparks of their spells like fireworks over the stone.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>To the west, Leonie was whooping gleefully atop her horse with her lance whirling in the air as she and Ashe drove the Imperial forces farther back from the bridge, all while Ashe clung to her with his own nervous laughter. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Family</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Byleth tested the alien word in her mind. It warmed that hollow space in her chest, and she found herself sending a silent reprimand out to Jeralt—where ever his soul might be—that he was wrong this time. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Yes, she was too bold and selfless for them. She cared—likely cared </span>
  <em>
    <span>too </span>
  </em>
  <span>much—but she wouldn’t have it any other way, even if it meant her own end. They were an odd bunch, a family of mismatches with a fierce affection for each other, and she adored them for it. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Byleth hardly felt her legs give away, collapsing back to the flagstones beneath. The force of her fall swept the air from her lungs, and her head ached. The corners of her edges were hazy, and her ears still rang like a hornet’s nest, yet she found herself smiling at the cloudless sky above her. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>A shadow swept into the blue expanse. She could feel the faint breeze of wingbeats across her clammy skin before her eyes fell shut despite her fighting attempt to stay conscious.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  
  <span>Claude urged his wyvern into a swift landing, its wings falling to rest in a canopy to provide cover for Byleth as Claude leapt from his saddle. A sharp pain bit at his bones from the jarring landing, but he paid it little mind as he rushed to Byleth, lying unmoving on the ground. His vision seemed to swim with his pulse as he fell to his knees at her side, eyes glancing over her form to check for injuries. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>There was the flushed swell of a shallow cut on her chin, but she looked otherwise unharmed. His hands were planted on the ground beside his knees, keeping him balanced, and his fingers twitched to find a pulse. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>No heartbeat</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he reminded himself—even though he knew well from reading Jeralt’s diary that she still had a pulse. But his hands seemed rooted to the stone, bones heavy as lead. He swallowed against the lump in his throat, chewing a mess into the inside of his lip. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Ridiculous, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he scolded himself. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>There was the slight shift of the plates of her armor as she inhaled, the sun reflecting off the dark metal. The shallow rise and fall of her chest jolted a beam through his panic, and he clung to the relief like a drowning man. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>As long as she was breathing, everything else would be all right.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He stood to his feet to peer past the cover of his wyvern’s stretch of wings, sharp eyes scanning the battlefield. The bridge was cast in a haze of smoke that made the horizon seem intangible, like a dream. His eyes followed the blaze of white magic that illuminated the smoke to the south, and caught the glimpse of Marianne’s hair that rivaled the sky’s color. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Claude took an eager step forward to call for her, but halted as more Imperial units seemed to emerge from the haze to catch Marianne off guard. Lorenz swept by on his horse, sending a bolt of his own magic to aid her. The two were being quickly pushed back from the unexpected reinforcements. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Instead, Claude turned on heel to shout the opposite direction. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Hilda!”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She was just remounting her own wyvern with Lysithea, glancing up with wide eyes to catch his own gaze. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Claude gestured to the south, watching as her eyes found Marianne and Lorenz and their thinning battalions. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Even from the distance, Claude could see her slump in woeful exasperation even as she curtly nudged her wyvern to take flight. Lysithea startled from the sudden movement, eyes round as she clamped her arms around Hilda’s waist while they quickly crossed the battlefield.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“You would all be hopeless without me!” Hilda exclaimed down to him on her way by, but the remark was lost as she gasped at the sight of Byleth. Lysithea opened her mouth to say something before they were too far, but Claude waved them on.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I can handle it,” he shouted back before she could ask. “Those two need you </span>
  <em>
    <span>now</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span> Lysithea reluctantly nodded as her gaze followed Claude’s commanding finger to the south, and the two swept past to reinforce the struggling front.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Claude returned his attention back to Byleth’s unconscious body, breath baited as he waited for the rise of her chest. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She was still breathing, and he released a breath of his own.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He knelt again, leaning over form hesitantly. His hands hovered in the air, just above her waist as though she was a scalding hearth. The leather of his gloves creaked as his fingers trembled, and he clenched his jaw. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Ridiculous, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he wanted to shout at himself. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Claude clenched his eyes shut, gasped a breath, and let his eyes open once more. He reached for her, shuddering as he swept her limp body into his arms and hefted her off the stones. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Her arm hung limply in the air as he turned to carry her to his wyvern, and he bit past the urge to shout, to collapse, </span>
  <em>
    <span>something—</span>
  </em>
  <span>something to distract from the heat of her body pressed against his chest, the feeling of her weight settled in his arms, and the rising bile in his throat. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Unbidden, he imagined that heat slowly draining from her limbs until she was cold, cold, cold—</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>And he was trapped between two bodies, two statue-still, bleeding bodies that seemed icy to his touch—</span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>No heartbeat—no heartbeat—</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
  <span>The startling taste of blood shook him from his spiraling panic, and he realized he was biting through the inside of his lip. He sucked in another breath before swinging into the saddle of his mount, shifting Byleth’s legs so they were swept over his own leg while her upper body was curled safely to his chest. He reached around her to take the reins, the feeling of her body consuming all his senses. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>His heart was pounding hard enough that he figured it was filling the empty space where her own heartbeat should be. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Ridiculous—ridiculous—</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Don’t die. Don’t die. Please, Byleth—</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He kicked his wyvern into motion. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He was tearing through the piles of rubble, the stones slicked with his own blood. The smells of cooled bodies and stale smoke were searing the inside of his nose—</span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Dorothea. Dorothea. Dorothea can heal her.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
  <span>He couldn’t decide which would be worse: to find her dead body somewhere in all that debris, or to find nothing. Perhaps she would be left there, sealed forever in the jagged stone of a decimated wall, just like the bodies of those two boys. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>There were footsteps on the stairs behind him, painfully familiar, and he turned. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to shout or cry or laugh at the sight of her face, untouched by the five years that had passed—</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>But she was breathing. Claude blinked back into the present, glancing from the shifting rise and fall of her chest to the stir of her eyelashes. Perhaps she was dreaming—and he was struck with the sudden hope that whatever she could be dreaming of, that it was pleasant. He almost wanted to laugh at the abrupt, naive thought. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>But she was breathing. Her skin was warm through the layers of her armor and clothing, and it wasn’t fading—her body wasn’t cooling. She wasn’t a corpse. The heat of her body flush against his seemed to seep through his own armor, pooling into a low flame in his stomach. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He matched his own breaths with her slow, even ones—and he was present. The stretch of her lungs, the flutter of her eyelashes, the heat of her skin—she was present. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Claude held her a little closer. He spotted Dorothea below, and led his wyvern downwards. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I’m sorry,” he whispered to Byleth, though he knew she couldn’t hear him. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>Great Tree Moon 1186</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She was blinking. At least, she hoped she was. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Quite frankly, she couldn’t feel her body, and she felt suspended in a sea of icy water. Her senses seemed to be dimmed and grated to the bone, and the most she could do was stare blankly somewhere onto the glassy surface of the secluded lake before her. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>There were familiar faces lingering in her mind: detached almost like masks in a sickened way that only her frazzled brain could conjure. They were smattered with blood, so much blood—</span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Whose blood? Whose blood, Byleth?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>I wish it was mine.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>I wish it wasn’t their own.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
  <span>There were fingers on her face, pressing just below her right eye. Her fingers, she realized a beat late. But the skin there was dry where she had expected—perhaps hoped—to be tears. But she was suspended in water, numb and stony as a corpse. It hurt to breathe. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>The lake before her was inky under the night sky. The shore lapped at her bare feet like spills of ichor, feeling no different than the sand to her senses. There was a line of silvery light severed through the center of the lake, the full moon’s reflection almost blinding in the face of the muddled world around it. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Teach.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Her body didn’t respond. She blinked at the water once more, vaguely wondering what that wavering haze of silver would feel like against her skin. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He was behind her,  slightly to her left but still out of her periphery. A snaking strand of hair was clinging to her lips, pinned there by the gust of a breeze long minutes earlier. As still as the world was now, she never could have guessed wind had even passed through the tiny valley. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I almost drowned, once,” she was saying suddenly, feeling as though her voice was detached from her body, hanging in the air around them. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Claude remained silent, opting just this once to save his words. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I was nine, I think. I was too bold or too stupid, and the water was too cold. My limbs felt like lead when I tried to swim back to shore.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Byleth shivered, finally allowing her hand to fall from her face to hang lifelessly at her side. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I couldn’t keep my head above the surface. I inhaled water, and it was like...like I had drank the steel from the smithy’s forge and let it cast in my lungs. I felt so heavy.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She blinked, and he was standing beside her, still silent as death. She blinked, and her hands were in front of her, palms skyward as she stared at their callused surface. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“It seemed like it took days before I could feel my limbs again.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She flexed her fingers, her brain searching to command the tendons threaded to her bones to curl her digits into fists. She watched as her knuckles drained of color, her uneven nails biting crescents into the heels of her palms. She couldn’t feel it.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Distantly, she wondered if her nails could cut through her own skin, leaving tiny bite-like marks. But before she could see, she allowed her fingers to slacken and stared as the blood flushed back to her knuckles. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“It wasn’t your fault.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Oddly, she wanted to laugh at the statement after he uttered it. But no sound came from her lungs, and she dropped her hands to her sides once more.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“It seems to be my lot in this life,” she said after a beat, eyes returning to stare at the lake. “To shatter people.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“‘Shatter’?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Dimitri, Edelgard,” she breathed their names, letting the shards of their memories burrow somewhere in her chest. One was dead now and the other one still stubbornly breathing, yet she felt they’d been lost years ago when she had slumbered through a war. Fleetingly, her eyes glanced at him at the corner of her vision, taking in his serene profile framed by the moon. Even in the dim light, she could see that hallowed weight in his eyes as they stared forward. “You.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Me.” It wasn’t a question.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I feel those five years everyday, you know,” she whispered. “I hate myself for leaving you.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Hate is a terribly strong word,” he replied softly. “You once told me you had no concept of strong emotions.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Being your mentor taught me a number of things.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He let out a humorless, airy attempt of a chuckle. “Should I be proud I taught you such a terrible feeling?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“It’s better than feeling nothing.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Ashen Demon. </span>
  </em>
  <span>She wanted to say the title, but somehow it felt like it no longer belonged to her. And oddly, she was almost grateful for it.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Claude turned to her now, but her feet were rooted in the sand like a willowed tree. The silver on the lake looked like snow.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“It wasn’t your fault,” he repeated, voice more resolute despite his hushed tone. The sentence startled a fire through her chest, and she couldn’t quite pinpoint a name for the feeling. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Distantly, she wondered where the sudden change in tone had come from. Where only mere weeks ago he had insisted he’d never make the mistake of trusting her again after what happened, he was now insisting he didn’t blame her. Perhaps it was the encounter of today, she reasoned: the battle where they murdered their old friends and saw the haunted look in Dimitri’s eye. Where they had seen his bloodied corpse heaped in the copse of trees, littered with arrows whose fletching were deceptively, Imperially red from blood and grime despite being born yellow. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>It was only later that Byleth had learned that distantly through their family line, Dimitri and Claude were something akin to cousins. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>That’s what war does</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Byleth had overheard him telling Hilda after she had found the lost Prince’s body. </span>
  <em>
    <span>It turns the best of us on each other for the sake of ideals. Friends, family—they’re just words in war. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
  <span>Perhaps it was something in the startling realization of the fragility of life and the bonds that came with it, when old friends turned to seeking each other’s blood. Perhaps that was why he was speaking so vulnerably, struck with the sudden understanding that there were few allies in this world.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I still left you all behind when you needed me most.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“We survived, Teach—more than survived, even. The Alliance held its front far better than our neighbor. But you’re here now, and that’s enough.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Or perhaps it was the fresh memory of the Bridge of Myrddin that changed him so: when she had sputtered blood from her lips and collapsed to the ground without a single fatal wound on her skin. Perhaps now he saw her as fragile; that death threatened to claim her even when no arrow, blade, or magic touched her. But of course he couldn’t know of the searing power of a goddess in her veins that was surely killing her with each abuse of turning back time.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Whatever it was, she still found herself shaking her head, his words clattering uselessly against the marble mask she always wore. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Things could have been so different, you see—“</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Teach.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“If I hadn’t been so stupid and ran after Rhea—“</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Stop that—“</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Then maybe I could have stopped things sooner—“</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Teach, stop—“</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“And then maybe you wouldn’t see me as a stranger.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>A chilling silence hung between them. She realized a second late that her arms were wrapped around herself, fingers digging like iron clasps into her bare skin. Her jaw was clenched shut, and she suddenly wished she could simply melt into the lake’s inky water and be nothing more than a pale reflection in its depths.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“You’re not a stranger, Byleth.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She said nothing. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Claude managed a strained sigh at her silence and her brazen refusal to meet his eyes. After what seemed like a lifetime of terse nothingness, she blinked as his hand lifted into her vision. He held his palm skyward, bare of any glove. The moonlight casted shadows over the network of scars across his skin. They looked like little valleys and ranges. </span>
  
</p><p>
  
  <span>She stared at his hand before her as he waited like an offering. Her eyes wandered the length of his arm before they climbed to his face, his features tranquil and resolute under the spangled sky. She held his gaze a moment before the twitch of his fingers drew her attention once more. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>You don’t trust me</span>
  </em>
  <span>, the memory of her own accusatory voice clawed in her ears. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>What reason do I have to trust you? Why would I make that mistake again?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
  <span>He was suspended in water, lungs full of cooled steel and limbs icy. He was reaching, reaching—straining so his hand would break the surface to the breathing world. He was trusting that a hand would find his own—if not for the survival of his own wellbeing, but for the proof that someone would bother reaching back. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Byleth lifted her hand. She allowed it to linger just above his, suspended like a question. When he didn’t move away, she carefully lowered her hand until their palms met. He flinched, nearly imperceptibly, and she paused with baited breath. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“It’s okay,” he amended, voice almost inaudible. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Their fingers were next, and she let hers thread through his. His hand was warm against the biting chill of the night air, the rough lines of his scars melding against her own calluses. She could feel the shift of his tendons as he hugged her hand a little tighter, breathing hitching. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>I trust you, </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>I trust you;</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He let their tangled hands find a home at their sides, and Byleth held to the contact like an anchor. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
    <span>I trust you</span>
    <span>.</span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div></div>
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